On This Day in HISTORY

1066 – Harold Godwinson begins his short reign as Harold II, King of England

Harold II’s coronation, Bayeux tapestry

1412 – Joan of Arc born, French military leader, martyr and saint

1540 – King Henry VIII of England marries wife #4, Anne of Cleves, one of only two wives to survive the experience

Holbein’s very flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves

1655 – Eleonore Magalene of Neuberg born, Though she would have preferred to be a nun, she became Holy Roman Empress and Queen Consort of Hungary and Bohemia and bore 10 children, five of whom survived to adulthood; politically active, she often translated foreign political documents for her husband and was one of his trusted advisors; widely known for her many works of charity; well versed in theology and Latin, she translated the Bible from Latin to German

1661 – During the English Civil War, the ‘Fifth Monarchists’ believed that the four world rulers in the prophesies of the Old Testament Book of Daniel meant to precede the Kingdom of Christ had already come and gone. They initially had some influence with Oliver Cromwell, but soon lost his ear. After the Restoration of the Monarchy, on January 6, 1661, fifty of their group unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London in the name of ‘King Jesus’ – most are killed or taken prisoner and later executed

1695 – Giuseppe Sammartini born, Italian oboe player and composer

1702 – José de Nebra born, Spanish composer

1714 – Percivall Pott born, English surgeon, a founder of orthopedics, and first scientist to demonstrate that cancer can be caused by an environmental carcinogen

1721 – The Committee of Inquiry on the ‘South Sea Bubble’ publishes its findings. The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock private-public partnership created to consolidate and reduce the national debt, exchanging government debt for stock in the company. During Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession, though the company had been given a monopoly on trade with South America, it had little chance of succeeding since Spain controlled most of South America. But the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht granted Britain an Asiento lasting 30 years to supply the Spanish colonies with 4,800 slaves per year, which was contracted to the company. The changing politics of the British government; its failure to pay interest on its debt; corruption within the South Sea Company; but primarily, renewed war with Spain which caused the company’s assets in South America to be seized; all contributed to the ‘bubble’ bursting.

1745 – Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier born, French co-inventor with his brother of the hot air balloon, globe aérostatique

1803 – Henri Herz born, Austrian pianist and composer

1812 – Melchora Aquino born, Filipina revolutionary and national heroine, known as Tandang Sora (elder sora) and ‘Mother of the Revolution’ whose home was a meeting place, and her store a refuge for the sick and wounded of the revolution. She lived to be 107 years old

1870 –Vienna’s Musikverein concert hall opens, now home to the Vienna Philharmonic

1878 – Carl Sandburg born, one of America’s greatest poets

1878 – Dame Adeline Genée born in Denmark, ballerina and choreographer; principal dancer of the Royal Danish Ballet (1895); prima ballerina at the Empire Theatre in London (1897-1907); debuted in 1907 in America, performing in The Soul Kiss, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, and toured with the production in 1908; in 1912, she appeared at NY’s Metropolitan Opera in La Camargo, a tribute to the great ballerina Marie Camargo; most notable for her role as Swanilda in Coppélia; became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1950

Dame Adeline Genée by Bassano, 1916

1882 – Sam Rayburn (D-TX) born, American politician, longest-serving Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, would not sign the Southern manifesto opposing integration, and refused to accepts fees or gifts from business interests that he might have to vote on regulating

1893 – President Benjamin Harrison signs the congressional charter granted by Congress for the Washington National Cathedral

1896 – First U.S. women’s six-day bicycle race is held at NYC’s Madison Square Garden

1907 – Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy

1912 – New Mexico is admitted to the Union as the 47th U.S. state

1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift

1915 – Alan Watts born, English-American philosopher, and author of The Way of Zen and two dozen other books on Eastern and Western religion and philosophy

1921 – Marianne Grunberg-Manago born in the USSR, French biochemist; discovered the first nucleic-acid enzyme, polynucleotide phosphorylase, a key step in cracking the genetic code; she was the first woman to direct the International Union of Biochemistry, and first woman to preside over the French Academy of Sciences (1995-1996)

1930 – The first diesel-engine automobile trip is completed, from Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York, New York

1931 – Thomas Edison signs his last patent application

1931 – E. L. Doctorow born, American novelist and short story writer

1936 – Porky Pig makes his ‘Loony Tunes’ debut for Warner Brothers

1941 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his ‘Four Freedoms’ speech in the State of the Union address

1946 – The first general election ever in Vietnam is held

1947 – Pan American Airlines offers the first round-the-world ticket

1949 – Caroline “C.D.” Wright born, American poet, editor of Lost Roads Publishers, which specialized in publishing new poets and translations; 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, for her book One With Others

1950 – The United Kingdom recognizes the People’s Republic of China. The Republic of China (Taiwan) severs diplomatic relations with the UK in response

1955 – Susan B. Horwitz born, American computer scientist who worked on program slicing and dataflow-analysis; founder of Peer Led Team Learning for Computer Science (PTLCS); led a collaboration involving eight universities on a study of the effectiveness of combining active recruiting with peer-led team learning, concluding it attracted and retained under-represented students in introductory Computer Science classes

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.

5 Responses to ON THIS DAY: January 6, 2018

I love that “three wise men” thing. Once long ago I got a box of Christmas cards (only six of them) that had a weird photo of three guys in profile on the front: One exotic looking possibly Italian fellow dressed in fancy “opera star” clothes holding a battery-operated toy airplane, a tall “cafe-au-lait” guy who looked like a dancer, dressed in lame and holding a big pink rubber duckie, and a serious-looking short Asian guy wearing elaborate furs and jewels, holding an object that appeared to be made of wires and spirals. It said: “Three Wise Guys.” On the inside it said: “Merry Christmas.”

I found a Hanukkah/Chanukah card one year that had a stick figure guy trying to spell the word, with multiple cross-outs, on the cover, and “Happy However-You-Spell-It” on the inside. It was a big hit with the people I sent it to.

I’ve always wondered how “three wise men” became “three kings” – royalty not noted for being any wiser on average than anybody else, and what are the odds of three different kings abandoning their kingdoms for months to go follow a star?

I met Alan Watts not too long before he died. Met him in the springtime at Esalen Institute, and he died in November that year. He was one of the most intense people I ever met. When he talked to you, his focus was total. When the conversation ended, and he turned to someone else, he gave them complete 100% attention. He was an impressive, brilliant, insightful man.

Alan was a complex man. He was an Episcopal priest, as well as Zen master. /i have not looked it up, but I believe he was the Episcopal chaplain at the university during the time he worked on his PhD. He did not see a conflict between being a Christian minister and Zen. He could see the interconnection between everything in a way many philosophers cannot.

As for his lectures, there are many hours of Watts’ lectures on the internet. Some YouTube recordings are short, like the one posted above, and some run well over an hour. Most of his lectures were tape recorded. Back then, video was not widely available, and 8mm and 16mm film was very expensive. Those were the days before VHS was invented. I had a videotape recorder at school. It used two-inch wide tape, and even a big 12″ reel did not have a very long running time.